In short
- There are nine Civil Service behaviours. The advert names the ones you'll be assessed on, never all nine.
- What's expected depends on the grade: read the examples for the grade of the job, from AA and AO up to Director General.
- Give real examples, from work, volunteering or a hobby, structured with STAR.
- In July 2026, plans to scrap Success Profiles were reported. At 10 November 2026 the GOV.UK guidance is unchanged: follow the advert.
On this page
- What are Civil Service behaviours?
- The 9 Civil Service behaviours
- How Civil Service behaviours change by grade
- Where Civil Service behaviours are assessed
- Civil Service behaviours examples: STAR answers
- How to write Civil Service behaviours on an application form
- Civil Service behaviours, strengths and values
- Are Success Profiles being scrapped?
- Practise Civil Service behaviours questions out loud
- Questions
What are Civil Service behaviours?
The Cabinet Office defines behaviours as ‘the actions and activities that people do which result in effective performance in a job’. Because they can be observed and measured, recruiters use them to predict how you would perform in the role. They replaced the old Civil Service competency framework: the move to Success Profiles was completed in January 2019.
Behaviours are one of the five elements of Success Profiles, the Civil Service recruitment framework:
- Behaviours: how you work, the subject of this page.
- Strengths: the things you do regularly, do well and that motivate you.
- Ability: your aptitude or potential, usually measured by online tests.
- Experience: your knowledge or mastery of an activity or subject.
- Technical: specific professional skills, knowledge or qualifications.
Not every element is used for every job. The recruiting manager chooses the behaviours best suited to the role, and the job advert tells you which ones and how they'll be assessed.
The 9 Civil Service behaviours
Here are the nine Civil Service behaviours, summarised from the GOV.UK definitions, with a typical interview question for each.
| Behaviour | What it means | Example question |
|---|---|---|
| Seeing the big picture | Understand how your role supports your organisation's objectives, wider Civil Service priorities and the national interest. | ‘Tell me about a time you changed your work because of a wider priority.’ |
| Changing and improving | Look for chances to improve things, suggest new ideas, and review ways of working, including through feedback. | ‘Give an example of a process you improved.’ |
| Making effective decisions | Use evidence and knowledge to make sound decisions and give advice, weighing options, implications and risks. | ‘Describe a difficult decision you made with incomplete information.’ |
| Leadership | Show pride and passion for public service, engage others in a shared vision, and value diversity and inclusion. | ‘Tell me about a time you motivated a team through a difficult period.’ |
| Communicating and influencing | Communicate with clarity, integrity and enthusiasm, and respect other people's needs and views. | ‘Describe a time you persuaded someone who disagreed with you.’ |
| Working together | Build effective relationships inside and outside your organisation, sharing information, resources and support. | ‘Give an example of working with another team to reach a goal.’ |
| Developing self and others | Keep learning, and help colleagues and the organisation develop. | ‘Tell me about a time you helped a colleague build a skill.’ |
| Managing a quality service | Deliver service objectives with professional excellence and efficiency, taking account of diverse customer needs. | ‘Describe how you improved a service for its users.’ |
| Delivering at pace | Take responsibility for timely, quality results with focus and drive. | ‘Tell me about a time you delivered under a tight deadline.’ |
How Civil Service behaviours change by grade
The nine definitions are the same at every level, but the examples of what's expected are written for six grade groups: Administrative Assistant and Administrative Officer (AA and AO), Executive Officer (EO), Higher and Senior Executive Officer (HEO and SEO), Grade 7 and Grade 6, Deputy Director, and Director and Director General. Read the examples for the grade in the advert, not the one above or below.
Take Making effective decisions. In the GOV.UK examples, the bar rises like this:
- AA and AO: use guidance, check information for errors or gaps, and ask colleagues for input before deciding.
- EO: take responsibility for fair and timely decisions, research further information, and explain clearly how you reached them.
- HEO and SEO: draw on credible internal and external information, invite challenge, make difficult decisions even if unpopular, and present recommendations with options, costs, benefits and risks.
- Grade 7 and 6: make sure decisions are taken at the right level, interpret complex and sometimes incomplete evidence, and decide confidently when details are unclear.
So the same story can score differently by grade. For an HEO post, an example where you only followed guidance will fall short; for an AO post, it may be exactly right. You don't need to show every bullet point in the examples to succeed, the guidance says.
Where Civil Service behaviours are assessed
The GOV.UK guidance lists several ways behaviours can be assessed, at different stages:
- The application form: written examples for each behaviour, within a word limit set in the form.
- Online tests: such as the Civil Service Judgement Test, which asks how you would act in work situations.
- The interview: face to face, by phone, by video or pre-recorded. GOV.UK says it usually lasts 30 to 60 minutes; Civil Service Careers says 45 to 60.
- Assessment centres and exercises: a presentation, an in-tray exercise, written analysis, a group discussion, a role-play or an oral briefing.
You might be asked for a past example, or how you would behave in a given situation (a situational question). The examples can come from work, work experience, volunteering or a hobby. Civil Service Careers adds that a less successful example can work if you show what you learned and how you'd avoid the mistake in future.
How are behaviours scored? The GOV.UK guidance doesn't publish a marking scale. If the advert or candidate pack explains how answers are scored, prepare to it. What the guidance does say is that you must make clear how your example meets the behaviour: don't assume the panel knows the situation you were in.
Civil Service behaviours examples: STAR answers
The Civil Service suggests the STAR method to set the scene, show what you did and how, and give the outcome. Three examples at EO level:
Situation: ‘In a benefits processing team in Sheffield, our claims were being delayed because the fraud team needed documents we didn't know they wanted.’
Task: ‘My manager asked me to sort out the handover between the two teams.’
Action: ‘I arranged a short call with a fraud officer, listed the documents they needed most, and added them to our checklist. I agreed a shared inbox for urgent cases and briefed my team at the next huddle.’
Result: ‘Cases sent back to us fell from about ten a week to two within a month. The fraud team now invites us to their monthly meeting.’
Situation: ‘At a council contact centre in Swindon, our booking system went down on the morning of a garden waste renewal deadline.’
Task: ‘As the senior adviser on shift, I had to decide what to tell callers before the IT team knew how long the outage would last.’
Action: ‘I checked the policy with the service manager, weighed extending the deadline against taking details by hand, and chose to take details on a shared form, which we could process later. I explained the decision to the team and to callers in the same words.’
Result: ‘No resident lost their renewal, all 140 forms were processed the next day, and the form became part of our outage plan.’
Situation: ‘In a licensing team at a public body in Newport, new starters took about six weeks to work without checks.’
Task: ‘I suggested we could shorten that, and my manager asked me to try.’
Action: ‘I asked the last three new starters what had slowed them down, wrote a one-page guide to the ten most common case types, and paired each new starter with an experienced colleague for their first fortnight.’
Result: ‘The next two new starters were signed off in four weeks. Feedback showed they felt more confident, and the guide is now part of the induction.’
How to write Civil Service behaviours on an application form
In a written statement, the panel only has your words. Start with one sentence that names the behaviour you're showing, keep the situation short, use ‘I’ for the actions, and end with a result. Check the word limit in the form and use nearly all of it.
‘In my role as a team leader at a logistics depot in Northampton, I was asked to cut the backlog of 600 unprocessed returns before a client audit in three weeks.
I first broke the backlog down by type and found that 60% were simple refunds. I set a daily target for each of my six team members, gave the simple cases to the two newest staff with a checklist, and kept the complex ones for the most experienced. I checked progress against the target every afternoon and moved people when one queue grew.
When a member of the team was off sick in week two, I took on her cases and asked the night shift to handle the simple refunds for three days, which they agreed to.
We cleared the backlog four days before the audit, with no errors found. The client renewed the contract, and the daily target board is still in use. I learned to break a big task into steps early, and to check in with the team every day rather than wait for problems.’
If you're also asked for a CV and personal statement, show the behaviours there too: Civil Service Careers says the statement should show how you meet the essential criteria, with evidence of the behaviours, experience and technical requirements in the advert. You may be asked for an anonymised CV, without your name, age or gender. Our guide to the CV personal statement covers the short profile at the top of the CV.
Civil Service behaviours, strengths and values
Interviews often mix behaviour questions with strengths questions about what you enjoy and do well. The Civil Service Strengths Dictionary lists 36 strengths, and the guidance asks you not to rehearse those answers: the panel wants your first response. Our guide to strengths and weaknesses explains the difference.
The Civil Service Code sets out four core values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. They are not one of the nine behaviours, but they run through them, especially Leadership and Communicating and influencing. A good example never contradicts them.
Are Success Profiles being scrapped?
On 17 July 2026, Civil Service World reported that the Future Civil Service programme of the Cabinet Secretary, Dame Antonia Romeo, would start by scrapping Success Profiles and introduce ‘a new model that emphasises skills and expertise’, with further changes to follow.
At 10 November 2026, no replacement has been published on GOV.UK: the Success Profiles guidance is still online, last updated on 29 January 2025. Until that changes, the job advert is your guide. Prepare for the elements and behaviours it names, in the way it says they'll be assessed, and check the advert and candidate pack again before each stage.
Practise Civil Service behaviours questions out loud
Civil Service Careers says you can use AI to prepare, for example to generate mock interview questions from the job description and practise your answers, but not to invent experience, complete tests, or produce answers during a live or recorded interview. Your examples must be your own.
Our guide on competency-based interview questions has more STAR examples, and how to prepare for an interview covers the day itself. To rehearse on the real advert, try a mock interview.
Frequently asked questions.
Sources
- Success Profiles, Cabinet Office
- Success Profiles: Civil Service behaviours, Cabinet Office
- Success Profiles: Strengths, Cabinet Office
- Success Profiles: Candidate overview, Cabinet Office
- Behaviours, Civil Service Careers
- Assessments and interviews, Civil Service Careers
- Artificial intelligence and recruitment, Civil Service Careers
- The Civil Service Code, GOV.UK
- Civil service recruitment: Success profiles to be scrapped, Civil Service World
About the author
Diego Benitez
Founder of Kandiq, more than 100 hires led
Diego Benitez has hired more than a hundred people, in marketing, sport and sales, as a manager at Intersport and then as Head of Growth at Goodvest (2022 to 2026). He ran those hiring processes from start to finish: screening applications, interviews, the hiring decision, then managing the team. He also knows the candidate's side: internships, work-study, student jobs, a permanent contract, starting an agency, then freelancing. He built Kandiq to give candidates what he looked for in an application himself, and what screening software can read. His guides start from the questions candidates ask Google, rely on official public sources (government employment and careers services, employment law) and are updated when the rules change. The examples are fictional; the figures are sourced.
